A common and dangerous task for friendly personnel (e.g., military personnel or police) is clearing all or part of a building. This typically entails killing, capturing, or forcing the withdrawal of all enemy personnel (e.g., enemy combatants or criminals) in the building, while preventing innocent-bystander casualties and other collateral damage. At some point in the act of clearing a building, a first squad of friendly personnel must enter a first room the building. This activity may involve significant personal risk to the first squad. One way to lower this risk is to detonate a hand grenade, or other injury causing or incapacitating device, in the room prior to entry. Nevertheless, such a device can harm innocent bystanders and/or cause significant damage to property.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have been developed for a large array of tasks. One such UAV task is for aerial reconnaissance. For example, the Raven® UAV, with a wingspan over 4 feet, provides low-altitude surveillance and reconnaissance intelligence for both military and commercial applications. Nevertheless, typical UAVs are not sized and configured for indoor flight in the crowded and complex settings typically encountered while clearing a building, and getting a UAV into a building could prove problematic in dangerous situations. Moreover, if a typical UAV were used indoors, it would be difficult for it to recover from any accidental encounter with an object that interrupted its flight and made it fall to the ground.
UGVs have been suggested for use in clearing buildings. Nevertheless, UGVs sized for indoor use would not provide good viewing angles, such as might be needed to identify enemy personnel hiding in ambush behind barriers. Furthermore, they are not configured to handle the array of obstacles (e.g., stairs) that a typical indoor surveillance device could encounter.
Accordingly, there has existed a need for an unmanned vehicle capable of being used for surveillance in a crowded, indoor environment. There has also existed a need for methods of gathering intelligence for clearing a room or building using such devices. Preferred embodiments of the present invention satisfy these and other needs, and provide further related advantages.